"You have to let me look," Jae-yi says again. "You have to—"
"While your hands are still shaking?" Sang Pil covers both of hers in his own, and shakes his head. "Jae-ya…nothing broken. There's nothing broken."
Her brows twitch uncertainly under her fringe, but her mouth is set in a firm line. "How," she says carefully, through her teeth, "Can you be sure?"
"I have broken most of my bones at least twice," Sang Pil tells her proudly. "And my ribs many more times than that. I'm a little sore. That's all."
But she won't let him go. He has found a place to hide the car away from An Oh Ju's hideout, away from the highway, lest anyone stop to see what the matter is.
Her hands steady themselves as she undoes the buttons of his shirt. He's bleeding a little—scratches on his hands and face, and a long, scraping bruise above one hip. He'll be black and blue for days, underneath wool-blends and starch.
He thinks of An Oh Ju, sprawled and defeated and suddenly—quite old.
He thinks that it was worth it.
.
One, two—
An Oh Ju never gets to three. Because he knows, doesn't he, that Sang Pil will always step into the ring, will always fight to save what he loves.
(Her blood is still on those floorboards. He remembers the way the sobs felt, after they had dried up in his throat, remembers when his uncle looked at him for the first time like he knew him, remembers how none of it was enough to bring her back.)
Forgiveness?
He does not think he knows it. Does not think that he deserves to.
But justice is noble, and vengeance is noble in its way. He will cross out many debts, even blood on floorboards, if it means giving his mother the future she would have wanted.
.
At night, when the lights are low, Jae-yi's fingers are sticky with salves. The heap of snowy white bandages beside her is laughably large.
"You would not have made an efficient nurse."
"Shh." She frowns at him. "Your mouth is swelling."
Obediently, he presses ice against it. He follows the way she moves with his eyes, the way she tucks her lower lip between her teeth in concentration. He wants to kiss away that frown, but she also told him to sit still.
He had been certain that he was barely stiff, until he tried to change his sweat-stained shirt. He could barely strip it off; the kink in his right shoulder, slammed a few too many times against the concrete floor, is particularly relentless.
"You will run out of suits," Jae-yi scolds, easing the sleeves down his arms slowly and surely.
"Never."
.
When she finishes her ministrations, she drapes a blanket around him and lowers herself between his knees, so that she can look up at him. He's seen her cry, and he thinks she might cry again. Her dark eyes are a little too bright.
"We can't afford—" she begins, and then she's back to biting her lip again. He slips two fingers under her chin, a light touch, just enough to lift her face towards his. "I can't afford," she amends. "For you to throw yourself away. Even if it means winning. I just—"
He doesn't answer too quickly. It wouldn't be fair to her. "I knew what I was doing," he says at last. As if he had a plan, when the eye of a pistol barrel was pressed against his brow. As if he had a plan, when he feared she might be lost to him.
He is not the man she wants him to be.
She is always so close to finding that out, and yet, always, she returns to him.
.
An Oh Ju will never cease to be the man who gutted his mother. One swift, ugly turn of a knife was all it took to bleed the life from her.
Sang Pil leans forward, against the protest of his tortured muscles, and captures Jae-yi's lips with his. Her hands twine in his hair; she cards it back from his forehead and soothes the split in his lip with the warmth of her kiss.
"I love you," she whispers, and he gathers her in his arms, thinking nothing of the bruises.
An Oh Ju would have finished them both today, if the edge of fortune's knife had slipped even a hairsbreadth. There is blood on these floorboards from a long-ago yesterday, and more may be spilled tomorrow.
Justice is noble, and love is immortal.
Pain and time make way for both.